Twitter has teamed up with American Express to launch a self-serve ad platform for 10,000 small and midsize businesses in the UK. American Express cardholders can now register to use the platform. After registration they also receive $100 which they can spend on advertising including promoted tweets and accounts. 

Photo: Twitter page for small and medium businesses, from www.prweek.com

Twitter first started the service that allows advertisers to make electronic payments instead of being invoiced by the sales team, in mid-November with a group of fewer than 20 advertisers and expanded the group to about 100, says Ad Age. Last year, Twitter launched the brand pages along with the platform redesign.

«So many hundreds of thousands and even millions of small businesses have been using Twitter effectively for years already, so by opening up our ad platform to all these folks as a mechanism for them to amplify the value they’re already creating,» said CEO Dick Costolo.

Small businesses are allowed to set bids for promoted accounts on a cost-per-follower basis and for promoted tweets on a cost-per-engagement basis. If they chose the latter option, they pay only when users actively engage with the tweet. Small business will be able to bid on specific terms or geotag their bids.

The self-serve platform will be open for the first group of 10,000 businesses in late March with the further roll out more broadly.

This move will help Twitter to boost its revenue, which was around $140 million, according to research company eMarketer. Twitter’s rivals Google and Facebook also offer self-service ads across their products.